38 Studios owned Big Huge Games (who developed Kingdoms of Amalur) and was recently closed, as we told you about in the collapse of 38 Studios. The employees at Big Huge Games are about get some help from Epic Games.

A number of the leadership team at Big Huge Games reached out to Epic and pitched the idea of a new studio that would develop Epic-owned IP. This has led to the news that Epic will be opening a new studio in Baltimore, Maryland that will be staffed predominantly by former employees of Big Huge Games.

Mike Capps said in a blog post that, “Epic was thinking about opening a new studio, but needed an abundance of proven talent to make it work.” This situation was a perfect match, but it is going to take time to find space and get it set up; but in the meantime, Epic is going to try to get some of these people working in Cary, North Carolina as contractors, as they have already been without a paycheck too long.

As for what they might be working on and how many people Epic will hire for the new Baltimore studio is still up in the air, and they will need some time to figure everything out. The news is good, however, and perhaps at least some of the talent at Big Huge will continue to stay together to make games. That fact alone is a good thing.

Developer Rocksteady has been hard at work in their Batcave, so to speak, trying to resolve the save corruption issues that have been dogging PC players of Batman: Arkham City since release.

Finally, a new patch for the PC should (or might) allow some to be able to restore their corrupted saved files if they happen to still have them. In addition, the PC only update addresses a couple of other issues, including a number of graphics issues for both Crossfire and SLI users.

Rocksteady has also improved the patching process so that it goes along much smoother now and gets rid of the error messages. Rocksteady does seem to think they finally have a handle on the saved corruption issues, so let’s hope that we don’t see it rear its ugly head again.

A high-profile bunch of Aussies have called for their government to step in to prevent Wikileaks founder Julian Assange from being extradited to the US. Former prime minister Malcolm Fraser and dozens of public figures have called on the Foreign Affairs Minister, Kevin Rudd, to ensure the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is protected from ''rendition'' to the US.

The fear is that if Assange is extradited from Britain to Sweden, where he may face rape and sexual assault charges, he could then be handed over to the US. In an open letter to Rudd, the prominent names have pointed out that the chances of Assange getting a fair trial in the United States are remote. Already top Republicans have called for him to be assassinated, and the Vice-President has called him a 'high-tech terrorist'.

"Given the atmosphere of hostility in relation to Mr Assange, we hold serious concerns about his safety once in US custody. We note that Mr. Assange is an Australian citizen, whose journalistic activities were undertaken entirely outside of US territory." Those who signed the letter include American academic Noam Chomsky, Julian Burnside, QC, and the Greens leader Bob Brown. It is not clear why they think Sweden would hand Assange over to the US without the "appropriate legal processes that accompany normal extradition cases" but it is possible.

The drama surrounding the inability to wipe save game data from the Nintendo 3DS versions of Pac-Man and Galaga Dimensions has apparently taken an interesting turn, with the revelation that you can actually wipe the save data from the cartridge.

Initial reports suggested that it was impossible to erase the save game data off the Pac-Man and Galaga Dimensions cartridges, according to a number of sources. While we don’t know if it will work to wipe game save data from other cartridges, it does seem to work fine with these two titles.

Apparently, all you need to do once the game boots up is to input “ABXYLR” and the save game data will be wiped from the cartridge. It is currently unknown if this code will work with other cartridges that were said to suffer from this issue. We suspect that we will hear more about this once more folks have a chance to test and figure out what the deal is.

For the last couple of months we have heard from a number of our sources that Sony has been working on adding Cloud-based storage for PlayStation 3 game saves. By saving their game saves in the cloud, users would be able to access data from any PS3 console as well as save disk space. Back in 2009, Sony trademarked the term “PS Cloud”, but nothing ever seemed to come of it.

Apparently, a number of online sources are now confirming that this Cloud-based storage option will be a part of the upcoming version 3.60 firmware update that is apparently already in the pipeline for release. The option is said to be called “Save File Insured” and will be available as an option to PlayStation Plus subscribers.

A number of developer sources that we have spoken with confirm that they have been aware for some time of this upcoming Cloud-based storage option that Sony was working on, but only recently have things apparently heated up to the point where they, too, believe that Sony is moving to make it part of the next firmware update for the console.

Despite our best attempts, we have not been able to uncover what else might be a part of the 3.60 firmware update; but apparently with all of the recent security problems that the PS3 platform has been having since the release of the master key for the system, our sources say that they have heard whispers of an upcoming firmware release that will at least address some of these issues. However, no one seems to know if this will be a part of the 3.60 firmware update or not.

Despite rumors that are circulating though the PlayStation 3 Black Ops community that deleting your save game data will resolve your connectivity issues with the game, Treyarch is trying to get the word out that this does not have an effect on the problem.

As we reported, Treyarch released a patch that seems to have improved the network connectivity issues for some players, apparently it has not solved the issue for everyone. The company continues to work on a fix that will solve the problem fully for everyone, but they currently have no ETA on when this hot fix might arrive for PS3 players.

While PS3 Black Ops players are asked to be patient, the rumor of deleting your save game data has complicated the issue, making more players unhappy with the situation. Treyarch is working overtime to figure out the cause of the problem and hopefully they will have it solved soon.